Where the Wild Things Are

Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Harper Collins, 1963. 40 pages.

Maurice Sendak both writes and illustrates a creative twist on the imagination of a young boy in the book Where the Wild Things Are. Where the Wild Things Are begins with the boy Max being sent to his room without any dinner for misbehaving. Max then journeys through the mystical land where the wild things live. While Max is there, he is crowned the king of the wild things until he begins to miss his home. Even though it seemed as if years had passed, Max came home to find his dinner was still hot.

Where the Wild Things Are captures the remarkable imagination of Max in a faraway place. In this children’s picture book, Maurice Sendak is both the author and illustrator. The text in this book is married to the illustrations. This marriage is the equal composition of both the text and the illustrations used to tell the story. Sendak’s illustrations and use of lines are very distinct in the book. As Max leaves his home and moves out into the land of the wild things, the lines in Sendak’s illustrations become less straight and more curved to Max’s imagination.

This drawing shows how straight Sendak drew the lines for Max’s house.

This drawing shows how curved Sendak drew the image for the land of the wild things.

There are many philosophical aspects to this children’s book. One major philosophical aspect children may debate is if a forest really grew in Max’s room.

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew.

From a literal sense, this quote means a forest actually grew in Max’s room. However, if taken in a figurative sense, the forest possibly grew in Max’s mind. Did a forest grow in his bedroom or was this land of the wild things only a figment of Max’s imagination?